Emergency declared on space station

Equipment failure causes toxic spill; crew was never in danger

Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press

Published
10:00 pm PDT, Monday, September 18, 2006

HOUSTON -- An oxygen generator on the International Space Station overheated and spilled a toxic irritant Monday, forcing the three-man crew to don masks and gloves in the first emergency ever declared aboard the eight-year-old orbiting outpost.

NASA said the crew members' lives were never in any danger. They cleaned up the spill with towels. A charcoal filter scrubbed the irritant out of the air. And within a couple of hours, life aboard the station 220 miles above Earth was nearly back to normal.

But it was the biggest scare this smooth-running space station has had.

Although it paled in comparison with two fires and a collision on two previous Russian space stations and the nearly fatal explosion on Apollo 13, the incident served as a reminder of how life-and-death emergencies can come out of nowhere. It is why an emergency space capsule is always parked at the outpost in case of a sudden order to abandon ship.

NASA never came close to ordering the crew to leave the station, space station Program Manager Mike Suffredini said. But astronauts did reveal they were worried.

About three hours after the emergency, Station Commander Pavel Vinogradov tried to explain what happened to Moscow Mission Control, saying "different thoughts came to my mind." Russian flight controllers interrupted, telling him: "We were kind of nervous here, too."

NASA and the Russian space agency were investigating what caused the problem.

"We don't exactly know the nature of the spill ... but the crew is doing well," Suffredini said. "It's not a life-threatening material."

The astronauts sounded an alarm after the equipment began smoking and turned off the ventilation system to avoid spreading any fumes from leaking drops of potassium hydroxide, which is used to power batteries. Monitors showed that the cabin air was safe. "It was just an irritant issue," NASA spokesman James Hartsfield said. "The crew did exactly the right things they were trained to do."

Also yesterday, Atlantis' astronauts gave the ship's wings and nose one last inspection with a remotely operated TV camera and laser, and NASA said there appeared to be no damage that would prevent the shuttle from coming home.

Atlantis and its six crew members are set to touch down early Wednesday at the Kennedy Space Center after 11 days in space delivering and installing a major addition to the space station.